Is This the End of Tony?: ‘New York’ Staffers Predict the ‘Sopranos’ Finale, Part I

Tony and Paulie in the season finale of The Sopranos.Courtesy of HBO

Joe DeLessio, nymag.com Producer:
Tony’s family issues and his Family issues converge once and for all, and Janice kills him. She was already pissed at Tony for refusing to help with Uncle Junior, and given the fight at the cabin earlier in the season, she probably thinks Tony didn’t do much to stop Bobby from getting whacked. Plus, we know she’s capable of it — just ask Richie Aprile.

Ben Wasserstein, Associate Editor:
Carmela, alone in her kitchen, begins to sob as the camera pulls away, rendering her an increasingly small figure within the Sopranos’ house.

Stephen Rodrick, Contributing Editor:
Tony lives, but Meadow gets killed. Tony said last week that the family is off-limits, but nothing would accentuate the utter amorality of his world more than one of his children’s being executed. It would expose his fucked-up hypocritical code to be a complete farce.

Dan Kois, Vulture Editor:
The title of whatever song David Chase plays over the closing credits will become instant shorthand for the end of an era.

Jerry Saltz, Art Critic:
Tony killed kin; he must die.

He will be punished in Caina, Round One of the Ninth Circle of Dante’s Inferno. Here are punished the Treacherous to Kin, those who betrayed those to whom they were bound by special ties. Tony will be frozen for all eternity in a lake of ice up to his neck. His only consolation will be that he is permitted to bow his head, which will allow some protection from the freezing gale that continually blows, and will allow his tears not to freeze his eyes shut.

Carmela will live on as an empty shell, having suffered not only the loss of her home, husband, and friends; she must also suffer the loss of one of her children, either to death or madness. As an opportunist, someone who in life was neither for good nor evil — who lived in willed darkness — her punishment in hell will be to run through darkness, stung by wasps and hornets; her pus will drip from her body, where it will be feasted on by loathsome worms and maggots.